The December 23 issue of Fox & Hounds, a California politics blog, has this commentary on the “top-two open primary”.
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For some years, the National Conference of State Legislatures has been keeping a very useful database of bills in state legislatures that amend election laws. Here is a link to that database. One can choose to look at all the election law bills introduced in any single state, in any recent year. Or one can choose to see bills in all states on particular election law subjects, or any combination.
The hard work of finding these bills is mostly handled by Jennie Drage Bowser, with help from Tom Intorcio and Tim Storey, all members of the staff of NCSL. The headquarters of NCSL is in Denver.
The database does not include pre-filed bills. Bills don’t appear on the database until any particular state legislature has convened. Almost all state legislatures will meet in regular session during 2010. Most of them convene the second week of January.
The Connecticut legislature had a brief special session this week, but again it took no action to amend the law on public funding for candidates for state office. So, the original law will be the subject of the upcoming 2nd circuit oral argument on January 13, 2010. The U.S. District Court had invalidated the law on August 27, 2009, and the 2nd circuit is expediting the state’s appeal of that decision. But if the legislature had acted during December, 2009, that could have mooted the case, or at least mooted parts of it. The lawsuit is Green Party of Connecticut v Garfield.
On December 22, Parker Griffith, a Democratic member of the U.S. House from Alabama, said that he is changing parties, and is now a Republican. He had been elected in 2008 for the first time, receiving 158,324 votes. His only opponent in 2008, a Republican, received 147,314 votes. His district, the 5th, is in the north end of Alabama, and includes Huntsville and Florence.
If Parker Griffith lived in California, his party switch would mean that he could not run for re-election. California law, unique among the 50 states, says that no one can get on a primary ballot if he or she had been a registered member of some other party at any time in the year before filing. Filing for the California primary opens in March 2010.
Independent Political Report reports here that Michael Badnarik, Libertarian presidential candidate in 2004, has suffered a serious heart attack. Badnarik is 55 years old.